Andy took a deep breath, gradually exhaled, then without further hesitation replied, “The secret vaccine for such psychological viruses lies in your thoughts and your feelings. Feelings such as love, caring, sharing or being pleased by the good fortune enjoyed by yourself or others are just a few of the remedies that can lift your spirit and clear away the unwanted viruses of negative feelings.”
“But why do you call negative thoughts and feelings viruses?” Janet persisted.
“Because, Janet,” Andy answered, “negative thoughts and feelings contaminate the human soul and spread mental imbalance, bringing to the owner a clouded version of reality which he can spread to others. For example, if someone is suffering from such viruses as greed, hate, vengeful feelings, jealousy, envy or insecurity, that person can never find peace of mind. Peace of mind will not come about until he truly sees that it’s his own thoughts that are, innocently, creating his problems—and I repeat, innocently.”
“I notice that you speak about feelings a lot,” Janet remarked. “Why do you put so much emphasis on feelings?”
“Yes, Luv, I do. Because our feelings are one of the most important things in our lives.
“Our feelings are the barometer of the soul.
They are the measure of our thinking.
They let us know what mental weather we can expect;
They let us know how we are faring in life.”
“Andy, what about people who have anxiety attacks? What if it’s in the genes as some are supposing?”
“I have no idea how to answer that question, Janet. After all I’m not a therapist or a geneticist. But if I, personally, were depressed or overanxious, I’d look at my thoughts and recognize that they were the source of my feelings; then I’d try to change those upsetting thoughts as soon as possible. Believe me, genes cannot have anything to do with Mind, as I told you before. Mind is by nature spiritual and has no form of its own, therefore it can’t possibly be carried in a gene.”
“You know, Andy,” continued Janet, “it’s pretty common for medical students to think they have many of the diseases they are studying—sort of a disease of the week. Well, that was me as a Psychology graduate student. I don’t know if you know this or not Andy, but as Psychology students we never studied health. We only studied diseases, and like many others I began to recognize, in myself, all the symptoms I was reading about and fell into moments of anxiety and depression.
“As I became more and more obsessed with these symptoms they appeared to grow stronger and I saw myself as a clinically depressed person and a clinically anxious person. I just didn’t know that it is perfectly natural to have low thoughts and thoughts of insecurity that would pass uneventfully if they were seen for what they were.
“It was no wonder many senior psychology students took more medication and thought they needed more therapy than they had as freshmen. I’m just this minute starting to realize that my problem wasn’t just the stress of school, as I thought at the time; it was my pessimistic focus on mental sickness.
“When I believed I had these illnesses, the more that unconstructive focus brought credibility to my thoughts, the more the illnesses became a reality.”
Andy had been listening attentively to Janet’s recollections but then he broke in. “It really doesn’t surprise me that your obsession with your symptoms lent credibility to your thinking you were ill,” he said, but I am amazed to hear that you didn’t receive any tuition on mental health. Why do you suppose that was?”
“I have no idea,” Janet replied. “It’s astonishing, isn’t it? All I know is my entire instruction concentrated on behavior and past traumas leading to mental illness.”
I then described to Andy how we were taught that genetics and childhood conditioning were the bogie men that smote us with the scourge of mental illness. “When I graduated I felt powerless and hopeless and governed by powers beyond my control. The trouble was that what we were taught in school about illness continued to color my practice. I can only talk for myself, but I remember that at first I had no idea what to do with a client who was in good spirits. I wasn’t prepared for that. I wanted to deal with illness and in all innocence, I often tried to lead them into a situation by bringing up problems from their past. Quite often I warned them not to be overly positive or they might set themselves up for disappointment. I realize now that I was denying myself and everyone else hope.”
Janet dropped her head in mock shame, then gave an embarrassed chuckle. “Let me tell you a story. Sometime after my first meeting you, Andy, a good friend of mine heard about the success I was having in my practice. He suggested that we might go into practice together and, to that end, that I should visit him in his new office someday.
“When I went to visit him I found it next to impossible to find a parking spot, which I found very frustrating. I thought to myself, ‘What a crazy place to open a new clinic, there’s so little parking for his clients.’ After circling round the area half a dozen times I finally found a parking spot quite a distance from the clinic.
“Of course I was late for our meeting, and when I entered my friend’s office, I told him about the trouble I had finding a place to park and said it must be very annoying and frustrating for his clients, adding to their distress before coming to their session. He laughed at me and said, ‘Janet, that’s the idea. As you know I am a psychoanalytic therapist and the frustration the clients vent on me is called transference; and as you also know, transference is a good thing because it gives me some illness to work on.’
“I told him I no longer believed in using transference as a therapeutic tool and that now I do the very opposite. Now, I want my clients to be as comfortable and high spirited as possible during their session. He seemed really surprised, and asked me why I would want them to be in high spirits when I saw them.
“I then explained to him that it’s because I want to bring out their own mental health, not their mental stress. ‘Surely this is why they are coming to us,’ I told him, ‘to find some peace of mind and, if possible, their mental health. So why would I want to get them all angry and frustrated when they arrive in my office?’
“That man had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, and he accused me of being unrealistic and never again asked me to join his practice.”
When Andy heard Janet’s story he howled with laughter and asked Janet if she was pulling his leg.
“No, I’m dead serious. Honestly, Andy, that is a true story and to this day that man still practices that way I tried to tell him that I now know that frustration is bad for both the client and the therapist and that I prefer to join my clients in a world of well being and even laughter.
“I must say, I was surprised to see that it made him so furious,” Janet continued. “He lost his cool and yelled at me that he was taught at school, just as I was, that a serious and uncomfortable emotional environment was the appropriate therapeutic milieu and that Freud said that humor is just an expression of anger.
“I tried to calm him by saying that surely he could see that such ideas are humorous and hold no common sense whatever. That’s when he became enraged. I knew my friend was not a very happy soul, but I had never seen him behave as he did then. He was so disturbed by his perception that I was trying to put down his techniques.
“I apologized, trying to let him know that I had not intended to offend or upset him but I could see that he wanted nothing to do with my ideas.
“Driving home after our meeting I couldn’t comprehend my friend’s negative reaction to what I had said and I kept asking myself what I had said that made him so upset. Surely it wasn’t because I mentioned that I like to get my clients into a more positive mood? I found it difficult to believe that this same man had asked me to join him in his practice because of the successful results I was getting.”